Wonderwall
Yes, this post is titled „Wonderwall“ like the song from Oasis. I‘ll get to why I chose that name in a moment.
I don’t remember when this song came out in the 90s, according to Wikipedia the song was released in 1995. Probably I did hear it off and on, on the radio, but my first memory was after 1999. My colleague, Gerhard, was complaining about the song, that it‘s just a bunch of drunk Brits in the pub yelling. Somehow I agreed with him, the song wasn‘t my cup of tea and at some point I remember turning the radio off when this song came on.
Add nostalgia
But you see, songs have this thing of sometimes sticking around, sticking around for a lot of years. While it never made it to my favorite list, I did enjoy it when this song was played somewhere. Because now it comes with a backpack, a backpack of memories, memories of Gerhard complaining about the song, memories of my past job, things I did, things I didn’t have to do. Memories of my army time (what a colossal waste of precious time), the year 2000, 1Mbit internet being fast. The usual touch of nostalgia. Of course, only feeding your brain with the nice things of those times and omitting whatever was bad. But this is nothing special, several songs have the same effect, this doesn’t qualify to name this post after that song.
The next generation
As I mentioned, I didn’t have this song on my favorite playlist. While I enjoyed hearing it, it never made it to my favorites for whatever reason. One day, driving home with the kids my older daughter, as usual, requested for her playlist to be played. I always pretend to not like it, there are some crap teenage songs on there, but she also took some cool songs from me. She’s now however at that age, where she starts discovering her own self, her own songs, so I’m always curious what else she added to the list which means that in the end, I do play her playlist. Skipping over the teenager thing, listening to the cool songs on her list, but what is this? What do I hear playing? It’s Wonderwall from Oasis. I had a huge smile on my face while being flooded with a cocktail of pride and happiness. Yes, it’s just a stupid song (ok ok, it’s not stupid! Calm down everyone!), but my daughter discovered it without me and it’s a cool song that I also enjoy. It’s not a typical song from 2024, it’s not something she added because she heard it from friends at school. It’s something that she discovered, it’s a part of her and a part of her new identity growing up.
These are the small moments that I need to enjoy, this whole “new identity of growing up”, aka puberty, is a whole horror story by itself. Having some small things to smile about helps. A little.
This is the story of how this song finally was added to my favorites list as well as how this song got a new memory in its backpack, for our next encounter.
Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash